“High School Musical” Is Still In For The Summer

noah | August 29, 2007 1:55 am
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The soundtrack to High School Musical held on to the No. 1 slot again this week, selling 367,000 copies (a 40% dip from last week), or a total that outpaced the No. 2 album–Talib Kweli’s Eardrum, making its debut on the chart–by a margin of approximately 6:1.

Biggest Debuts: Swizz Beatz (No. 7) and As I Lay Dying (No. 8) both debuted in the top 10; meanwhile, a lot of kids who are willing to call themselves “indie” hit the stores for what was kind of the Super Tuesday of that not-really-a-genre, as M.I.A. (No. 18, 29,000 sales), Rilo Kiley (No. 22, 27,000 sales), and the New Pornographers (No. 34, 20,000 sales) all had sales around each other. I’m going to go out on a limb and peg the percentage of people who bought Challengers as well as the M.I.A. and Rilo Kiley albums at around 40%, but anyone with harder data than my hunches can correct me in comments.

Notable Jumps: Way down the chart, Rodrigo y Gabriela’s self-titled album experienced a whopping 209% sales increase, proving–like Paramore did last week–that incessant MTV exposure can help sell records, sort of. (Paramore, for their part, took a 24% sales hit and dropped out of the top 20.)

Dropping Off: UGK’s Underground Kingz took a 42% dip and fell from No. 6 to No. 10; the Dave Matthews/Tim Reynolds live album experienced a 59% sales hit, dropping from No. 3 to No. 19.

Nickelback Award For Inexplicable Durability: Ladies and gentlemen, Nickelback is back in the top 10; the 5% uptick in sales (39,000; last week 37,000) they experienced over the past week was enough to push them up to the No. 9 spot. Can we blame the link from Paper Thin Walls last week for opening an entirely new demographic’s eyes up to their irresistibility? Perhaps.

The top 20, with estimated sales totals in parentheses: 1. High School Musical 2 soundtrack (367,000) 2. Talib Kweli, Eardrum (60,000) 3. Hannah Montana 2 (58,000) 4. Hairspray soundtrack (52,000) 5. Now 25 (52,000) 6. Fergie, The Dutchess (50,000) 7. Swizz Beatz, One Man Band Man (45,000) 8. As I Lay Dying, Ocean Between Us (39,000) 9. Nickelback, All The Right Reasons (39,000) 10. UGK, Underground Kingz (35,000) 11. The Jonas Brothers (35,000) 12. Linkin Park, Minutes To Midnight (34,000) 13. T.I., T.I. Vs. T.I.P. (33,000) 14. Amy Winehouse, Back To Black (33,000) 15. Common, Finding Forever (30,000) 16. Taylor Swift (30,000) 17. High School Musical soundtrack (29,000) 18. M.I.A., Kala (29,000) 19. Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds, Live At Radio City Music Hall (29,000) 20. Cartel (28,000)